by C H Gideon
“An information edge is usually the deciding factor in a fight.” Styles shrugged. “However, they tricked people into thinking this was a regular tunnel and was irrelevant. Sergeant Major?” Styles switched to Nutcrackers’ command channel. “Request permission to send recon drones down Bravo Tunnel.”
Styles designated the tunnels and updated the other mechs and the helmet-mounted HUDs of the Trapper and his Pounders. It was important that everyone spoke the same language.
“Granted,” Trapper agreed, prompting a pair of track-driven drones to detach from Blink Dog’s flanks and scurry across the transit nexus. Their nimble chassis soon disappeared down the tunnel. Podsy checked the local sensor feeds over Styles’ shoulder.
“What are you looking for?” Styles asked absently as his semi-autonomous drones drove at a hundred kph down the tunnel.
“Nothing in particular,” Podsy told him. “It just seems odd that a transit junction like this would be part of some big cover-up, doesn’t it?”
“To a Terran, sure.” Styles shrugged. “But Solarians are all about top-down, centralized control. It’s the only reason we’ve been able to make it this far, which has been nothing short of a miracle as far as I’m concerned.”
“Not just a miracle,” Podsy chided. “Colonel Jenkins’ original plan to reintegrate armor elements into Fleet operations wasn’t just an interesting one-off or a stopgap designed to buy the power-suit production facilities a few months to make new suits. He recognized a growing gap in the Terran Armed Forces’ panoply, and he was trying to bridge that gap without reinventing the wheel. Speed and accuracy kill, yes, and nobody outperforms human Marines in those areas, which usually turn out to be decisive advantages,” he explained heavily. “But the Arh’Kel taught us one thing back on Durgan’s Folly above all else.”
Styles nodded in agreement. “Sometimes you’ve got to be able to take a hit, not just deliver one.”
Podsy shrugged. “There’s no way a Marine contingent could have held that junction on Durgan’s Folly long enough for you to complete your takeover,” he concurred. “Marines could have taken it, sure, and probably faster than we did. But with so many tunnels to hold and thousands of Arh’Kel in effective response range, that op couldn’t have worked without specially-designed equipment that we didn’t have. Armor gives us tactical flexibility that power-armored Marines can never perfectly match.” He shook his head damningly. “It seems like the Solarians developed the exact same blind spot to that fact that Fleet did.”
Styles smirked. “But instead of condemning them to defeat, that blind spot just might lead to their salvation.”
“Salvation for them, sure,” Podsy allowed, his brow lowering in dark contemplation. “But I doubt we’ll find anything like salvation at the end of this rainbow.”
“You didn’t actually think this would end in unicorns and lollipops for us, did you?” Styles asked in surprise.
“Not really.” Podsy sighed, running a hand through his hair and looking down at his prosthetic legs. “But however it comes, I think what we need more than anything is a break. These last few months have been brutal.”
Staubach snorted in apparent agreement as the drones reached the target zone. Podsy leaned forward, intently studying the initial video feeds from the two ground-based recon vehicles, and both he and Styles breathed identical sighs of relief at what they reported.
“Sergeant Major Trapper,” Styles declared over the command line, “recon drones have reached the objective. The upload hub is intact and undefended—” He broke off when the first drone’s video feed went dark. A flash of light preceded the second drone’s link death, prompting Styles to review the last seconds of footage before revising his report. “Correction, sir: recon drones are offline, and two fixed coil gun placements have been identified. No mobile assets detected.”
“She’s down to her panties, people,” Trapper said in a raised voice. “It’s time to cross home plate. Wet Willie, hold position here with the wounded. You’ll never fit down that tunnel, and having you cover our rear is more valuable than bringing another double-helping of left feet to the party.”
“Understood, Sergeant Major,” Wet Willie’s Jock acknowledged with obvious disappointment.
“Everyone else,” the sergeant major barked, “move out!”
13
The Transmitter
The colonization of Luna had once been heralded as the most important next step humanity could take on its journey to the stars. Its proximity to Earth offered tremendous material support to colonizers: its low gravity would make travel to and from the small planet far less costly and dangerous than doing the same from Earth, and the treasure trove of helium-3 spread across Luna’s surface seemed like an ideal source of cheap, plentiful fusion fuel for humanity’s continued growth and development.
Dozens of installations had been built on Luna’s surface, both on the near and far sides. Scientific outposts, mining operations, and even dedicated habitat centers were built in the decades that followed Earth’s last Great War (an event sometimes referred to by Solarians as the “Final War”).
For a time, the dream of a permanent self-sufficient Lunar colony looked like it had become a reality. At its zenith, Luna was home to one hundred million humans, two dozen large-scale H-3 mining operations, twice as many dedicated scientific outposts, and, of course, the vast military installation of Luna One.
Extensive mining operations had been necessary to carve Luna One’s various segments beneath the surface of the Moon. Those operations had left a sprawling network of tunnels behind, which Chinese forces had initially used to construct hidden fusion power plants, mass drivers, and eventually the surface-side fortresses like the one the Legion had overtaken in order to insert Sergeant Major Trapper’s people underground.
It had made sense, following the so-called Final War, that Luna One’s extensive infrastructure should serve to expedite humanity’s colonization of Earth’s silver-skinned twin sister. As a result, sprawling habitat compounds sprang up around every single one of the formerly-hidden top-secret military installations that had carved the last traces of organized resistance to Chinese supremacy from the face of the Earth. These habitat modules were erected by remotely-operated construction drones, and every single city on the Moon was completed long before its first human occupants stepped off Earth’s surface.
In less than a decade, using newly-constructed maglevs built after the Final War, human colonists began their march to the Moon, and to the asteroid belt, and to Mars, and to Venus, and to the moons of Saturn. This expansion came to be known as the “One Star” initiative and was viewed as the most meaningful human endeavor in the species’ history. The brick-red surface of Mars was now within reach and was soon dotted with habitat modules that housed millions of people. The clouds of Venus rapidly filled with floating hab-ships that bobbed along that hellish planet’s upper atmosphere like ducks on a rippling lake. And the moons of Saturn made for the most remote, and arguably the most beautiful, remove from Earth that was available to risk-taking human colonists.
Following the horrors of the Final War, many felt that this expansion period would quickly wash away the bitterness of Earth’s bloodiest conflict. Unified by a profound and innately biological purpose, the need to grow and increase influence on the environment, humanity seemed poised to take the greatest collective leap forward in its history.
And yet, despite even Pluto receiving a scientific colony, signaling that nothing within the Solar system was beyond human reach, the relative safety and mythological allure of Luna made it the prime colonial site in the Solar system. Competition was fierce among those who wished to call it home, and the screening process was draconian. As a result, only political loyalists and physically superior humans were allowed to colonize Luna. Many chafed at this favoritism, but there was little that could be done to counteract it.
At the height of the One Star expansion phase, humanity conducted its first test-flight of an A
lcubierre-influenced “warp drive.” Within seconds of the test team completing that two-second flight at speeds reaching one-point-zero-one-five times the speed of light, the Illumination League arrived to greet humanity with what had seemed like warm, invitingly open arms.
Their arrival and its implications led to high tension throughout Sol. Riots broke out in the streets, work stoppages caused dangerous and costly failures of the One Star initiative, and a fresh wave of resistance to government authority arose all across the globe like spring weeds poking through the front lawn.
Earth’s government, nominally a United Nations type of assembly, was still wholly controlled by Chinese interests—and those interests dealt with this dissent and rebellion precisely as their predecessors had done.
Due to historical censorship, few details are known of this turbulent phase in Sol’s history. What is known is that compliance was achieved with alacrity and a high cost in human blood as martial law was declared and rebels were summarily executed. With the rebellions put down and the One Star initiative reorganized into a less ambitious version of itself, humanity sought to join the Illumination League in order to gain access to wondrous technologies.
Chief among them were the wormhole gates, which ultimately led to the birth of the Terran colonies. For a time, all had seemed to be proceeding in humanity’s favor. Dozens of independent extra-Solar colonies were put down across the more than twenty different star systems the Illumination League had designated as human territory. Then the wormhole gates went dark, and the colonies that would eventually become the Terran Republic were thrown into a fight for their very survival. Some survived and a few even thrived, but most of these colonies died slow, painful deaths as they exhausted their resources and failed to adapt to their new and brutal circumstances.
No Terran knows precisely when Solar humanity abandoned their sprawling network of Lunar colonies, whose city lights had once been visible from Earth with a naked eye, but sometime after the wormholes went dark, the One Mind network became an inextricable part of Solar life. And sometime after Solar humanity had implemented this radical self-modification, nearly all human colonists withdrew to Earth from their homes in the asteroid belt and on the surfaces of Mars, Luna, Pluto, and even the moons of Sol’s gas giants.
The only colony that retained the majority of its colonial population was Venus. No Terran had conveyed a convincing reason as to why that colony, and that colony alone, persisted to this day, with over four billion humans presently calling its skies home.
As Captain Xi Bao approached the transceiver array they sought to take and hold, the looming towers and curved buildings that surrounded it seemed both dead and alive. Her targeting scanners identified dozens of vehicles abandoned in place, some of which looked like old-style automobiles.
The ghost city sprawling before them was large enough to house at least four hundred thousand colonists. Many of those colonists would have lived several meters beneath the pristine, paved streets and high-rise buildings that had transformed the Lunar desert into an oasis of human civilization.
Her commlink chimed, and she immediately received the inbound call with her canned response. “Elvira here.”
“Make 2nd Company’s approach from the west, Captain,” Colonel Jenkins commanded as the indicated course was highlighted on her HUD’s local map. “I’ll come in from the east while 3rd Company takes up position to the south. If you spot movement in any of those structures, do not engage. I say again: do not engage. Keep your poker face and call in a long-range strike from 3rd Company to put the whole building down. Just be sure to stay clear of the engagement zones,” he added sardonically.
“Copy that, Colonel,” Xi acknowledged as 2nd Company breached the outer edge of the colony. There were no signs to greet visitors because there were no surface roads connecting Luna’s long-abandoned colonial cities. The only transit lines were underground, which gave the settlements the appearance of isolated islands rather than the interconnected nodes of humanity they had once been.
Elvira led Cave Troll, Eclipse, Wolverine and Cleaver into the city from the west. The transceiver was located less than two kilometers from the city’s perimeter on that side, while Roy would need to cover three times as much distance from the other side of the city.
Generally, Sam Kolt, Osiris Risen, Preacher, and Indestructible-Mega-Titan Thunder-God Cid comprised 3rd Company’s remnants, and those mechs took up position twelve kilometers to the city’s south. That was the ideal range from which to launch their heaviest munitions while also allowing them to effectively cover the mechs of 1st and 2nd company with interceptor fire.
“Movement,” Eclipse reported as an unconfirmed icon appeared in a building two blocks ahead of their position.
Xi confirmed the flicker by reviewing Eclipse’s sensor logs. It was faint, but something definitely moved in that twenty-story building. None of these buildings were pressurized or thermo-regulated, which made it extremely unlikely that civilians were present.
She silently transmitted the coordinates to 3rd Company and received the virtual acknowledgment from Preacher’s Jock, Falwell.
Seconds later, a quartet of high-yield Devastator-class MRMs flew from Preacher’s launchers. Those missiles struck the building just above the second floor, where they proved worthy of their name.
The building’s southern face slowly collapsed, with the third floor collapsing just before the fourth followed suit. The fifth did likewise, then the sixth and the seventh, before the entire building began to slowly tilt southward.
A pair of Solar Marines’ rocket packs flared within the collapsing building, carrying their riders skyward as they fled the dying structure. For a moment it seemed they would successfully escape the crumbling building’s demise and reach the relative safety of a nearby high-rise.
Then Xi locked on with her chain guns and sent a stream of fifty-caliber rounds into the soaring Marines. Fewer than ten percent of her two-hundred chain gun rounds struck the marks, but those rounds proved more than enough as they punctured the rocket pack of one and scored a lucky strike against the other.
The damaged rocket pack exploded brilliantly, sending its user hurtling through a nearby building’s thin walls. The other Marine’s pack failed entirely, and he plummeted to the street…
Where he landed on his feet before sprinting to a nearby building, getting clear of Xi’s guns as the twenty-story building fell onto one of its much shorter neighbors.
Elvira’s seismic sensors went off as the falling building’s death sent shockwaves through the ground beneath Xi’s mech. Unfortunately, she was uncertain whether even one of the Solar Marines had been neutralized. It was probable that more than just two Solarians had chosen to use that building as an ambush point, but there was no way of knowing whether she had just wasted four of their Devastators.
“2nd Company, keep moving,” Xi commanded as Roy entered the city from the east and tore through the abandoned streets at over a hundred kph. “Keep your eyes peeled for their buddies but hold fire unless fired upon. Let 3rd have a little fun.”
Acknowledgments flickered on her HUD as she split her forces between three different streets. Elvira led Eclipse up the middle, Wolverine and Cleaver went right, and Cave Troll broke left as the mechs moved deeper into the city. Before they passed the buildings the Solarians had disappeared into, Xi sent Eclipse an order to deploy a disposable recon drone.
The drone shot up, powered by microrockets that carried it to an elevation of thirty-five hundred meters before station-keeping thrusters fired, delaying its inevitable surrender to Luna’s irresistible embrace.
The drone sent hundreds of high-resolution images back, five of which indicated Solarian Marines scattered throughout a ten-block area. Xi bracketed their positions and called in a flight of SRMs from 3rd Company.
There were too many obstructions for Elvira’s artillery, or even for Cave Troll and Cleaver’s plasma cannons to come to bear against the Marines. The Solarians ha
d dug in smartly and were ready to conduct a tactical retrograde operation to harass the Terrans as they drove toward their objective.
The drone’s telemetry went dark three seconds after it began, which meant the Solarians had sniped it from the sky. “3rd Company, engage targets,” she ordered before switching to a P2P link with Eclipse. “Sargon, upload Jem’s program.”
“Uploading,” Eclipse’s Jock acknowledged as 3rd Company sent a fresh swarm of SRMs toward the Solar Marines. The Marines took to the sky, where they zigzagged just below Xi’s firing arcs. Cave Troll got off a pair of SRMs, both of which missed their marks, but one struck a nearby building, throwing debris onto the juking Marine.
3rd Company’s SRMs converged on their targets, but only one scored a kill. The others were skillfully evaded by the enemy.
From the other side of town, Roy sent a flight of eight SRMs at the Solarians. Xi did likewise when two of the Marines rose a little too high above the nearby skyline, and the missiles converged to bring them down.
That left two positively-identified Solar Marines on the board. As those Marines attempted to retreat farther into the city, Cleaver and Wolverine emerged into a street, giving them a short-lived but crystal-clear line of sight on the Solarians.
It was an opportunity they used to maximum effect, and one the Solarians somehow managed to match.
Cleaver’s plasma cannon, already primed when the hostiles came into view, spat a blue-white bolt of superheated gas and metal at one. Rather than turning to flee as any sane human would do, the Marine took aim mid-air and sent a perfectly-aimed tungsten sliver into Cleaver’s cockpit. It all happened so fast that most observers would have missed it entirely.
And it was a moment that gave Xi Bao chills for reasons few outside military life could fully understand.
The tungsten sliver passed just beneath the plasma inferno mid-flight, and the valiant Marine’s power-armored body was incinerated by Cleaver’s hellfire an instant before the Solarian’s tungsten sliver killed Cleaver’s Jock. In the seconds that followed, a hail of six missiles erupted from the middle floors of nearby high-rises. Those missiles converged on the temporarily paralyzed Cleaver, which was pulverized by the concentrated Solarian fire.